Some Excellent Prospects Could Be Passed Over Pro Football

Some excellent college football players may learn all about the real agony of defeat Tuesday when the National Football League holds its annual draft. They may not be taken.

Drugs, you know. They tested positively at an NFL scouting combine down in New Orleans recently, so they conceivably could be passed over by all 28 teams. They may spend the longest day of their lives waiting for the telephone call that won't come.

A few may be lucky enough to be taken, but some, like three or four considered good prospects by the Philadelphia Eagles, already have been "redlined." They've gotten football's equivalent of the kiss of death.

"We've redlined about a dozen prospects," Eagles' Director of Player Personnel Lynn Stiles said Tuesday, "three or four of them for drugs. The rest are because of injuries or character flaws or for some other reason.

"The combine did the best job to date in drug testing this year. We've had some concerns about the testing in the past because we knew through our own evaluation that the problem existed among some players. Yet it didn't show up in the combine."

This year it did - 57 times. That's the number of players that were found to be using drugs in one form or another.

"How that will affect various teams and their evaluation process I don't know, I can't speak for them," Stiles said, "but the problem is always a concern. I don't think there's any place in athletics for that. It's detrimental to your football team, is a real sore.

"By the same token, there are degrees (of use). A player smokes marijuana, but to what degree? Is it occasional, a weekend thing or a serious habit? That's what we have to determine. Not many of those who tested positive in New Orleans fell into the category of heavy users."

Stiles said the Eagles "evaluate every athlete we think may be drafted, grade him accordingly and put him on the big board according to position and the round we think he will be taken.

"If players have been involved with drugs we identify that fact and, if seriously involved, that's when we draw a red line through their names. We won't take them.

"The thing that bothers me most is that the players know they're going to be tested by the combine. It's a standard process, and still they test positively."

Stiles thinks the one thing that has benefitted the Eagles this year, especially Ryan and his staff, is the fact that he had a minicamp in Florida.

"Consequently he had an opportunity to evaluatefirst hand some of his players," Stiles said. "Now preparing for the draft, the coaches have been able to look at the upcoming crop and draw comparisons with players already in the program.

"Buddy is animate about his feelings. There are no ifs, ands or buts. If he sees a player he likes, he says 'I like him and I'm going to go with him.' He doesn't care what other people think. If a player satisfies him, that's all that matters.

"He'll make the final decision on all selections, but once made, they're Eagle decisions."

"If there are any mistakes made, and there could be," Ryan said, "you're looking at the man who made them."